{"id":59942,"date":"2016-04-27T17:05:52","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T06:05:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.booktopia.com.au\/?p=59942"},"modified":"2016-05-02T22:24:31","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T11:24:31","slug":"vogel-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/2016\/04\/27\/vogel-winner\/","title":{"rendered":"Congratulations to Katherine Brabon, the 2016 Australian\/Vogel Literary Award winner!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Blog-image-Exclusive(5)\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Katherine Brabon is officially the most envied person by aspiring authors. Last night she was awarded the coveted Australian\/Vogel Literary Award for 2016, the $20,000 prize awarded annually to the best new work by a writer under 35. The winning manuscript is published by Allen and Unwin.<\/p>\n

Since it was first awarded in 1980 the award has launched the careers of several notable Australian authors including Tim Winton, Kate Grenville, Gillian Mears, and Mandy Sayer, and has become an indicator of literary talent.<\/p>\n

\"Katherine<\/a><\/p>\n

Brabon’s winning manuscript, The Memory Artist<\/a>,<\/em> was written for her PhD in creative writing that she is set to complete by the end of the year at Monash University.<\/p>\n

In it, the 27 year old from Melbourne tells the story of Pasha Ivanov, whose childhood apartment in Moscow was used for secret dissident meetings during the years of Brezhnev’s tyrannical rule over the Soviet Union. Years later, as a young man living in St Petersburg, the death of his mother triggers\u00a0Pasha’s desire to\u00a0create art and as he travels across Russia he retreats into his own memories and the country’s troubled past.<\/p>\n

\"KathernineBrabonBanner\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In her acceptance speech, Brabon was excited that the Vogel Award was awarded to a manuscript with no Australian connection.<\/p>\n

“Australian literature doesn’t have to be set in Australia … Today is the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and so that\u2019s been on my mind a lot, also because I\u2019ve been reading a translation of an oral history of that catastrophe, written by the Belarussian writer Svetlana Alexievich. She\u2019s a prominent critic of their current leader, and her work is a struggle for memory, and for art.<\/p>\n

In 2015, she won the Nobel Prize for literature, and to this day she\u2019s still not published in her home country. Her name is missing from school books, and her books enter Belarus via the underground, just as in my novel in the Soviet Union novels are brought in through the underground. So repression is still very much alive, unfortunately.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Brabon also made reference to repressed writers and expressed her gratitude for the freedom to write and get published without repercussion:<\/p>\n

“I can write in the absence of danger, I write not because I had to,<\/em> but because I wanted to<\/em>. I also felt compulsion, I had a tiny inkling of what it feels like to have a\u00a0sense that I must say this, I must tell this.<\/em>\u00a0For me it was to tell the story of the repression of words, and people, and the reverberation of that over decades and generations.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We congratulate Katherine and all the shortlisted authors: Anna Daniels for Rocky Road<\/i>, Gareth Dickson for A Minor Fifth<\/i>; and Christopher Przewloka for Coffin\u2019s Reach <\/i>(left to right below). <\/i><\/p>\n

\"Vogel<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katherine Brabon is officially the most envied person by aspiring authors. Last night she was awarded the coveted Australian\/Vogel Literary Award for 2016, the $20,000 prize awarded annually to the best new work by a writer under 35. The winning manuscript is published by Allen and Unwin. Since it was first awarded in 1980 the award has launched the careers of several notable Australian authors including Tim Winton, Kate Grenville, Gillian Mears, and Mandy Sayer, and has become an indicator of literary talent. Brabon’s winning manuscript, The Memory Artist, was written for her PhD in creative writing that she is set to complete by the end of the year at Monash University. In it, the 27 year old from Melbourne tells the story of Pasha Ivanov, whose childhood apartment in Moscow was used for secret dissident meetings during the years of Brezhnev’s tyrannical rule over the Soviet Union. Years later, as a young man living in St Petersburg, the death of his mother triggers\u00a0Pasha’s desire to\u00a0create art and as he travels across Russia he retreats into his own memories and the country’s troubled past. In her acceptance speech, Brabon was excited that the Vogel Award was awarded to a manuscript…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":59944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[4,39,73],"tags":[6772,6771,6774,6773],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/SocialMediaImage10.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59942"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59942"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60095,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59942\/revisions\/60095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}